Mixtapes were supposed to be free. Hosted by a DJ, given away to build a name, the real money came later, from an album deal, from touring, from anywhere except the tape itself.
Nipsey Hussle looked at that deal and decided it was backwards.
He'd originally planned to release Crenshaw free on DatPiff, same as everything before it. Then he read about a Philadelphia restaurant that once sold a $100 cheesesteak just to see what would happen. Nipsey ran the same experiment on his own music. He called it Proud2Pay: 1,000 physical copies sold for $100 each at a pop-up shop on Fairfax Avenue, each one including an autograph and a free ticket to an upcoming show.
He sold out in under 24 hours. $100,000, from a mixtape the internet said should be free.
Jay-Z heard about it and bought 100 copies himself, $10,000, posted the stack on his blog with the caption "#NewRules." Then, that same day, Nipsey released Crenshaw for free anyway. The point was never to keep the music from anyone, it was to prove people would pay real money for something the industry insisted should cost nothing. Once that was proven, in public, in under a day, there was nothing left to prove by holding it back.
That instinct, own the thing outright instead of renting attention, ran through everything he did after, all the way to Prolific, the posthumous album with Bino Rideaux arriving this August.
From the Crate
"The point was never to keep the music from anyone. It was to prove people would pay real money for something the industry insisted should cost nothing."
One More Thing
Crenshaw, hosted by DJ Drama, is streaming free right in the archive, the same way it was always meant to move.
And Prolific, Nipsey's posthumous collaboration with Bino Rideaux, is up for pre-order now, vinyl, CD, and cassette, all shipping August 14th.
Experience the culture at mixtapekings.com
— Diony C.